24. May, 2004 - the police are your friends, right?

Ugh. Not only is there this report of Sickening Police Misconduct at Art-a-Whirl , there’s a report of More Police Misconduct the Weekend of May 14-16. I’m wondering why there was nothing in the Strib about this. And lest my comments on Abu Ghraib confused anyone, the fact that I’m unsurprised by this sort of thing does not mean I condone it. I think it should be punished harshly, whether it happens here in Minneapolis or over in Iraq. Jim’s got more at Police Brutality in Minneapolis. When Jim first told me about these incidents, I was too mad to even try to blog about it, and I’m left with the feeling that it’s a real shame there wasn’t more crossover between Art-A-Whirl attendees and carry permit holders. In any case, it’s one where I think Minneapolis residents need to contact their council-member and the mayor and raise a ruckus. [jim]

The Justice Department seeks secret subpoena powers and almost manages to sneak it under everyone’s radar by splitting the provisions among many other bills. The legislation, which was all part of the original PATRIOT II bill would strengthen the gag-order provisions of the PATRIOT act, and also allow the Justice Dept. to go after lone-wolf terrorists who have no affiliation to larger groups. [press-patch]

Also, in Are you feeling safer already? VoWe collects some more links, asking if perhaps the government’s policy is that since the terrorists hate our freedoms, maybe if we take away all the freedom, they’ll quit hating us. [vowe]

Kim du Toit’s post You Might Be A Gun Nut If… is pretty funny. I know at least a couple of my friends who will get a laugh out of it.

On the personal front, yesterday was spent at home, reading. Mostly the web. Mostly Maciej Ceglowski’s Idle Words, once I calmed down after reading about the police bruatility. He’s a good writer, and runs the NITLE Weblog Census, which is an interesting project. Anyway, if you’re looking for seomthing to add to the list for a periodic read, you could do worse than Idle Words.

One of the spiffy things at Idle Words is Bolsheviks in the White House, an interview, originally done in French, then translated into Polish, and thence to English, with Daniel Cohn, a Green MEP. Cohn believed (the interview was done in early 2003) that the inflexible ideology of the White House is a big problem.